Censors demonize certain words in order to restrict your freedom of speech, thought, and behavior.
No word has any special quality that places it beyond the pall of “polite” societal discourse.
Politesse is rooted in the notion of cleaning shit off the streets. It means keeping out the riff-raff. It means snobs deciding who is allowed to hobnob with them. It means defining who gets to participate and who can be kicked aside and crushed by malice and indifference.
Who gets called shit, to be swept aside, determines society’s hierarchy and is the enemy of democracy. Language is of, by, and for the people, not a selective snobbery reserved for the perfumed few.
This is why such prissy Puritanical control is so deeply offensive to anyone who values freedom and liberty.
It’s culture war to tell someone they cannot say something in a certain way, using certain words, etc.
This is how slaves are marginalized and kept out of things. This is how groups are discriminated against.
Gays embraced that word precisely to throw it back in the face of those who demonize it, to offer one example. There are many, and will be more as long as we permit martinets to rule by whim and decree. It will be intolerable as long as we allow bigots to impose their prejudices.
